Under Pressure
by Raven Blanchard
Summary: She will survive this world. She will survive and thrive, and grow strong enough to burn it all down. She doesn't owe this world anything, after all. Not anymore. (Olva Dimond is picked as District 12's Tribute for the 72nd Hunger Games along with her younger brother. Everything changes, and only Olva knows. But who the fuck cares? Olva doesn't.) (OC/Self insert) (M for a reason)
1. ONE: For Your Entertainment

**BLURB: **_She will survive this world. She will survive and thrive, and grow strong enough to burn it all down. She doesn't owe this world anything, after all. Not anymore. (Olva Dimond is picked as District 12's Tribute for the 72nd Hunger Games along with her younger brother. Everything changes, and only Olva knows. But who the fuck cares? Olva doesn't.) (OC/Self insert) (M for a reason)_

...

**ONE**

**For Your Entertainment**

...

She is digging with her bare hands - the only tool she has to spare at the time. Daggers are hardly digging tools, after all. Besides, she'd need the daggers, she knows. Soon, and for something other than digging graves. And by then they will have to be sharp as can be, not dulled by rock and earth.

They will have to be sharp enough to easily pierce skin and flesh through polyester shirts. Sharp enough to maim and kill. But that's for later.

Next to her, a certain boy's skin has long lost the flush and heat of life, a cool and eerie pallor setting and sinking in like the painful talons of inevitable rot. The brisk air of dawn is thick and pregnant with the overwhelming presence of his absence, stifling and choking, resigned and in denial all at once. The sky is aptly dark, the forest filled with an impenetrable hush that is too silent to be soothing. It is early in the day, far too early to be doing anything, really, but at the same time it is far too late for anything to be done anymore.

Oliver - her sweet little brother Oliver - is dead and gone. Murdered at eleven years old. Olva would have done anything, anything at all, to keep him alive. She starved for him, nearly died several times over for him, and had _killed children_ for him. Olva Dimond would have done anything and _everything_ for her little brother, but now there is nothing left for her to do but try to bury him. Have those game-master bastards actually _work_ to dig him up from his grave, and show the world how truly callous and heartless they are. Murder. Abuse. Grave-digging would just be another one in this government's miles-long list of crimes. So let them show their true colors. Let them show the world how a young girl has just lost her younger brother to what basically amounts to a _reality TV show_.

Monsters. Monsters, all of them! Fuck them all!

It _isn't fair!_ Olva had known that on some level, of course, since the moment she had finished reading a series of novels in her first life. She figured she even understood Panem's suffering and perils quite well, diminished though they were through mere text on flat paper. Life just isn't fair, post-apocalyptic dystopian young adult novel world or not. Some things are just universal.

But children, she thinks to herself bitterly through furious tears and bleeding fingers, children should never have to be killed by the design of the very elders that should be protecting them.

Children should never have to die on live broadcast, as a means of _national_ _entertainment_.

What kind of fucked up world is this? Who would want to imagine - or even _write_ about - a world like this? An entire country populated as it is by these dimensionless _caricatures_ that call themselves "people," who at one moment would shed tears over a Tribute's sob story, and would at another moment do absolutely nothing at all to prevent children from being killed. "People" that would, upon seeing their favorite child Tribute die gruesomely, do nothing else besides fucking complain about lost wagers.

Seriously, what pure, undiluted liquid _insanity_ was Suzanne Collins drunk on when she came up with _this_?

A sharp pain stabs through her wounded fingers and she reluctantly gives up Oliver's burial as a lost cause. Instead she finds rocks to lay over him, flowers to pepper his resting place. Oliver... Oliver deserves the best, he always did, and Olva's _so sorry_, but this is the best she can do. She sings _Danny Boy_ to him through loud and ugly sobs and steady streams of tears, except in her verses "Danny boy" becomes "Oliver," but she can't rightly know _why it should matter at all_ that she changed an Irish folk song to suit her purposes, when these uncultured swine "people" obviously have fucked up tastes in entertainment.

Fuck these monsters. Damn them. Damn them all.

As the last note escapes Olva's parched throat and fades through the air, she observes the camera she knows is now focused on her because this is a "pivotal" and "dramatic" moment for the Game, full of the "suspense" that is sure to gain more viewers. She can feel in her bones than whatever she does within the next few seconds would be broadcast all over Panem and really, there's only one thing she can do.

She stares at the camera, facing it with an expression of all-encompassing and yawning _emptiness_ that she knows unnerves most people. Because she has died before, and though most times she can forget that, since her first life ended Death has always been at the background. An abiding and ever-patient shadow that never really goes away. She died before, but she has never been truly as dead as she now feels.

She twitches her lips into a broken facsimile of a smile and asks the world:

"Are you not entertained?"

* * *

**A/N: Welp, I had a random HG brain fart of a plot bunny, and this happened. As a newly minted doctor, I feel like I should post something dark and gritty, because, well, my new job does get a bit dark and gritty, so there. Anyway, expect Updates with my other fics, because holy crap, it's been a WHILE since I last updated most of them, so I should get started on that, I think. As always, comments and suggestions are ALWAYS welcome! Also, if you see any typos or grammatical errors in any of my fics, I'd appreciate it if you pointed them out, as I'm a bit OC that way and typos can get a bit sneaky.**


	2. TWO: What Dies Inside Us

**BLURB**: _She will survive this world. She will survive and thrive, and grow strong enough to burn it all down. She doesn't owe this world anything, after all. Not anymore. (Olva Dimond is picked as District 12's Tribute for the 72nd Hunger Games along with her younger brother. Everything changes, and only Olva knows. But who the fuck cares? Olva doesn't.) (OC/Self insert) (M for a reason)_

_..._

**TWO**

**What Dies Inside Us**

_..._

_"Olva... Olva, I'm scared... It hurts, Olva..."_  
_"Hush now. I know, dear heart, I know it hurts. But everything will be alright now, Olva's here... Everything's fine. You'll be fine now, Oliver, you'll see..."_

* * *

See, Olva had been scared too, was what she never told her brother. Since the very beginning and all throughout, Olva had been downright terrified shitless. And when her little brother was Reaped as District 12's male tribute and she inadvertently pulled a Katniss by immediately yelling "I volunteer! I volunteer as Tribute!"... Well, suffice to say she'd been even more terrified, if such a thing were possible. She didn't have Katniss Everdeen's balls of steel. She didn't have wicked archery skills, didn't have that disturbing killer instinct that the protagonist seemed to have in spades. What Olva did have, were Plans. Plans that were liable to change as her life progressively fucked up from ground level to the high heavens, but they were still _Plans_, and they were what she had. And though in perpetual flux, what remained constant was the fact that her Plans were always simple.

First it had been "lay low and wait for Katniss Everdeen to save the world."

Then it was "kill everyone else and then kill self to save Ollie."

But Ollie's dead. Deaddead_DEAD_, and there's only one thing Olva can do for Ollie, even if she can't really do anything _for him_ anymore.

Fuck Katniss Everdeen. Fuck the Capitol. Fuck President Snow and fuck the world. Ollie didn't deserve to be eviscerated by a mutant creature for the sake of national entertainment. None of these kids - even the trained killer ones - deserved to die for something so shallow.

Olva would show them.

Who needs a Girl on Fire when you have the Diamond Girl?

* * *

_"Olva, I'm scared. I'm scared!"_  
_...Me too, Ollie. You're bleeding so much, and oh my God, I can see your intest- Please__ don't die!_  
_Don'tdieDon'tdieDON'TDIEPLEASEOLLIE_-

_"You'll be fine Ollie, right as rain in no time, you'll see."_

* * *

Winning is hilariously easy once Olva has been shed of her brother and her sensibilities. It becomes as easy as laying low and murdering the fuck out of the last girl remaining. Laya, she thinks the name was. It took days of cat-and-mouse, but Olva has long since learned the lesson of _patience_. The last time Olva had been impatient, she'd placed her own and Ollie's names up for possible Reaping, all just for a bit of food she would have harvested soon from her little home-made garden anyway. But Olva has never been _that_ honest with herself, and so she blames the government instead. She's not wrong in doing so anyway.

Children don't deserve this, and sorry, but she'd kill this girl anyway.

Some things were just _more important_.

* * *

_"But what if one of us gets Reaped?"_  
_"Psh. As if that would happen to us first timers. There's a bunch more kids with bigger chances of getting picked, Ollie. Have a little faith._"

* * *

She faintly recalls that the girl, Laya, got a low score in the pre-game private trading session, but for the life of her, Olva can't rightly give enough shit about that. Killing a killer and killing an innocent... it's hard to tell the difference when they all bleed the same red blood. Apathy, instead of antipathy, is what made it easier and easier, as each death she witnessed from the cover of foliage slowly morphed in her mind from "brutal child murder" to "one less obstacle." _This_, she thought, at once feeling cold and strangely disgusted with herself, _this must be how those watching the Games can stomach the yearly child murder fest._ It was _routine_.

Then she remembered the clinical and distant smiles of those made-up neon barbies from the Capitol, with their mass-produced nose-jobs and lip fillers and Botox, grinning down at Ollie like he were a prized show poodle because _isn't he such a cute little darling? It's a tragedy he won't last long in the Arena..._

Olva remembers their shallow sentiments and thanks fuck that she's not _that_ far gone yet.

(She spares a glance at Laya, who is desperately clutching at the arterial spray gushing from her neck. Zero obstacles left. Thank goodness.)

...Or is she?

Laya's form twitches and inevitably falls still, and Olva can't quite muster up enough regret in killing the girl because, hell, at least she died quickly. Ollie had agonized for an _hour, _and she had to... had to...

She shakes her head and rises on tingling but surprisingly strong legs, cutting a solemn figure over her last kill. She picks up the girl's corpse as a carrier comes into view, along with the blinding lights and the deafening anthem of the Capitol. She frowns at the lights and gently closes Laya's unseeing eyes shut.

As she gets picked up from the Arena, blood-soaked and sweaty as she is, Laya's thin body in her arms, a familiar face greets her right as she enters the carrier. The anthem fades as the doors slide shut, and she's left with an eerie chill and ringing ears at its wake.

"Abernathy," she greets the man flatly, as he stares at her with beady eyes that almost seem...concerned. "I apparently won, against your bet to the contrary. Does that mean I win something from you?"

"Your life, smartass," Haymitch Abernathy grumbles as he throws her a wet towel to wipe herself with. It lands limply on Laya's body. "That's all you get. You win your damned life."

_And you lose everything else_, remains unsaid.

* * *

**A/N: Oh wow. I seem to be on a roll with this one. Tell me what you think!**


	3. THREE: Refrain from Imitation

**BLURB**: _She will survive this world. She will survive and thrive, and grow strong enough to burn it all down. She doesn't owe this world anything, after all. Not anymore. (Olva Dimond is picked as District 12's Tribute for the 72nd Hunger Games along with her younger brother. Everything changes, and only Olva knows. But who the fuck cares? Olva doesn't.) (OC/Self insert) (M for a reason)_

...

**THREE**

**Refrain From Imitation**

...

It's been three days, and the blood is still there.

Thick, red, ranging from a deep crimson to bright carnelian, it soaks her skin, her hands, wraps around her fingers like a warm, well-worn glove of wet, irrefutable accusation.

She has blood on her hands.

It doesn't quite wash away right, even after the full hour she's spent scrubbing her hands and arms and _face _raw in the shower. Even after the hot water spray has gone from red to pink to clear, the blood doesn't really _disappear_, a ghost of it clinging all over her senses. She could still **feel** the sticky warmth of blood in her palms and on her cheeks. She could still **smell** its coppery tang as it flowed and flowed and _flowed_ out of Ollie's dying body, along with the smell of piss and innards and shit.

...

_"Olva, I'm... I'm sleepy..."_

_"Then sleep," she tells him, the look of agony upon her face. But she smiles through it, because she doesn't want Ollie to be scared. "I'll be here, Ollie. I'll be here. I'll be just right here when you open your eyes."_

_She lets him sleep, sings him his favorite lullaby. She knows his eyes would remain shut forever._

...

She could **hear** the nearly inaudible drip-drip-dripping sound it must've made as it slowly left her fingertips and fell to the ground, a soft contrasting background to the blaring trumpets of the Capitol Anthem. In her mind the drops sound loud, deafening, and in her dreams she can't cover her ears, because her hands are so warm and soaked in blood. In her dreams she can never scrub the blood off her skin. In her dreams she can't just pinch her nose to escape the smell of it, because then she'd end up breathing through her mouth and having to _taste_ it, and that, _that_ was so _so_ much worse.

Drip. Drip. _Drip_.

_I won_, she tells herself with something like contempt. Every day and nearly every hour since Ollie's death. _I won. It's over. I already won, damn it. _

But that's just the thing. She won, but not really, because she lost, too.

Oh, she lost _so, so much_...

Olva won absolutely nothing at all, and she finds that victory tastes remarkably like ashes and blood. Victory sounds like Ollie's deep and dying breath. Victory feels like the blood she can never quite wash off right.

Drip. Drip. _Drip_.

The water is scalding and nearly melts her skin off, but it doesn't seem enough. She expects it never would be.

An uncharacteristically hesitant knock brings Olva back from her thoughts. Because it's obviously her mentor, who never truly had a sensitive bone in his body, despite recent attempts. With a frown, she quickly dries herself and wraps a bathrobe around her body.

"Abernathy," she greets her visitor.

The man looks like death warmed over, like he's been through hell so long that he wonders why he hasn't died yet.

She hasn't the heart to tell him that death isn't quite eternal rest it seems to be.

"Olva," he says, feet awkwardly shuffling. "We need to talk about the interv-"

"Spare me," she sighs. "I know how to conduct myself in public."

The man just raises a brow at her.

"I know what I have to be out there: darling-of-the-capitol, wasn't-her-brother-such-a-hero, I'd-never-_dare_-blame-the-government-for-its-fucked-up-means-of-entertainment-sir!"

He coughs, lips twitching in what seems to be morbid amusement. "Well, maybe not a _darling_ of the capitol, kid, that seat's taken."

"Not really. Odair is very male. Hardly darling material."

"...Irrelevant. I think. It depends on who's buying what he's peddling."

"I know exactly what he peddles. Information, flirtation, eye candy and dick. No need to walk around the bush with me. I know how the world works. I might have censored things around Ollie, but I've never been _stupid_."

Oh but she was. She'd been very _very_ stupid.

Stupidstupid_stupid_-

The man eyes her with an unusually sharp gaze. "I never said you were. All things considered, you're good at putting up an act. You seemed pretty tame, right up until you eviscerated and nearly decapitated that last tribute."

She shrugs. "I don't see a problem. The government wants its yearly child murder fest, it gets its murder fest, as ordered."

He sighs and lands himself on the couch, immediately taking a swig of something definitely alcoholic from his hip flask. "That's _exactly_ the kind of attitude you absolutely must not show on tonight's interview. You're the _victor_, kid. You have to act like you won something."

But she hasn't won, she thinks. She hasn't won, because the Game has just begun.

And _then_ she'll win.

* * *

**A/N: In case you haven't noticed, the chapter titles may seem a bit weird. That's because they're cut-outs from famous quotes/songs. Just Google a chapter title, and whatever pops up first is most likely what I grabbed it from. (Hint: yes, chapter one's title is from a song.)**

**Also, holy crap, the COVID-19 death toll's climbing. Stay at home, guys, and always wash your hands. If you absolutely must leave your home, then make sure to wear protective clothing/equipment. A strong mouthwash can be prophylactic, if you fear you've been exposed. This coronavirus pandemic is getting a bit insane, I can't wait for it to be over.**


	4. FOUR: I Have No Mouth

**BLURB**: _She will survive this world. She will survive and thrive, and grow strong enough to burn it all down. She doesn't owe this world anything, after all. Not anymore. (Olva Dimond is picked as District 12's Tribute for the 72nd Hunger Games along with her younger brother. Everything changes, and only Olva knows. But who the fuck cares? Olva doesn't.) (OC/Self insert) (M for a reason)_

...

**FOUR**

**I Have No Mouth**

...

After the utter farce of an interview is all done and wrapped, Olva sighs and girds her loins for another bout of torture. She gets to have a quick meal before her televised meeting with the President though, so there's that.

It's fried chicken, to her surprise. Crunchy and steaming hot, fresh from the fryer.

The chicken tastes strange to her.

* * *

_She stares at Ollie with a deadpan expression. "You know you're allergic. How about _no_."_

_The kid whines. "But how come you can eat it? It's not fair!"_

_"...Fine, you brat. Then I won't ever eat chicken too. That fair enough?"_

* * *

If her eyes tear up after the first bite, it must be because of the amazing taste of nationwide classism and what basically amounts legalized slavery and child abuse.

There's nothing quite like the crunch of the oppressed, Mr. President Snow, sir!

She supposes it tastes like _Church's chicken_, or "Texas chicken" as it's known outside of North America, only there's no "North America" anymore, and instead the United States has mutated into this game show _parody_ of a country named after _bread_, of all things.

As if there hasn't been enough emphasis on the nationwide poverty and famine.

Olva supposes it's not for her to judge; she's saved her judgment on far more relevant things, far more _important_ things, than the taste of fried chicken and the total lack of creativity involved with naming a nation after _bread_.

Seriously though. _Panem_. She still can't get over that. Like, why not _libum_ or _laganum_? "Cake" sounds a mite more interesting than fucking _bread_. It doesn't seem like any of these Capitol fuckers have tasted a single bite of plain bread in their spray-tanned lives anyway.

A silent girl - _avox_, she remembers Abernathy calling the mute ones - comes cleaning up the table almost immediately after Olva has set her last chicken bone down. No knives and forks for this little Seam girl. Chicken that good isn't supposed to be eaten with utensils anyway, and there's nobody around to judge her.

Abernathy is out arranging her own schedule with the government spooks - strangely efficient of him, that.

Olva's neon afro barbie shadow was in the next room over, fretting over color-coordination and _the political correctness of using burgundy or even carmine lipstick, when the president obviously prefers a shade of red between imperial and crimson,_ or some such rot. The woman's name was Ellie-Something. Something completely forgettable.

Olva can't rightly know why Ellie-Something is freaking out about at least four shades of red. It's stupid. Red is red. Who the hell cares if their sadistic fuck of a president prefers one shade or the other?

Personally, Olva would've preferred it if the man just wore crimson _all over_, especially if the color dripped from his neck and chest... and, well, Olva may be fifty shades of stupid but she isn't completely _retarded_, so she keeps her mouth shut about that.

**_ Time and place, Olva. Time and place._**

She's kept her mouth shut about a lot of things.

Abernathy has been a total rock throughout, in that not even a towel-clad, teenage girl having an emotional breakdown in front of him stopped the man from being his unapologetic asshole self. _Suck it up_, he told her then, while she was dripping with bathwater but still felt as if she were drowning in blood. She wasn't clean enough. She'll never be clean- _Suck it up, little girl, because it only gets worse_.

So she did. She toughed it all out, weathered the absolute hell that this fictional plot-device of a government threw at her (and Ollie). Though she doesn't really think Abernathy was right about that last part.

They killed Ollie.

It couldn't possibly get any _worse_.

**_I have no mouth, and I must scream._**

* * *

**A/N: So sorry for the short update, as a resident doctor there's just SO MUCH STUFF GOING ON, and so inspiration is spotty for me. You know, on top of my being a horribly slow writer in the first place. I'm grateful for whoever reads the crap I've been spewing here on FFdotnet, lurkers and reviewers alike. Seriously, y'all, this is one of the few things that are keeping me sane during this pandemic.**


End file.
